


Everything I Ever Wanted To Tell You

by ecs



Series: It's The Wrong Kind Of Place To Be Thinking Of You [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 13:26:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2469851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecs/pseuds/ecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonny also thinks about Patrick, which is no surprise, since Patrick always seems to invade Jonny’s thoughts. In his mind, he watches him laughing, smiling, talking about his books.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I Ever Wanted To Tell You

Part II. The Offseason

 

I.

Jonny decides to spend the first weeks of his summer not in Chicago, but in Winnipeg, his childhood home. It is a good, refreshing change to be alone in woodsy Winnipeg. 

He spends many of his days fishing on his favorite lake. Here, he sits afloat, with only the quiet, muffled sound of the swaying tree branches to distract him. Here, his mind is much more clearer. In some ways, this is good. Good because it gives him room for much needed contemplation. However, it also forces Jonny to face the looming thoughts that have lingered in his mind for far too long. 

So he sits afloat and listens to the swaying tree branches.

He sits afloat and thinks about his ever-growing feelings for Patrick and what it might mean for the future. There is no way I could ever tell him, he thinks. Is there?

There is much to contemplate. He is almost 100% positive that this isn’t some phase, although he wishes it was. Jonny has pure, unadulterated feelings for Patrick - that in itself is a given. But is it just for Patrick? Or guys in general? If it’s the latter, is it for only guys or for guys and girls? Apart from all of Jonny’s inexperience with exploring his feelings for different genders, he thinks about what he is going to do about all these feelings. His most natural instinct is to tell his mom. She has always been 100% supportive of Jonny, even when he almost decided to quit hockey for baseball, practically a sin where he grew up. He is sure she would be shocked, but probably okay with it. But he also doesn’t feel like making his mother shell-shocked just yet, since he doesn’t really know if he is gay or bi yet. 

Jonny decides to first explore his feelings with girls. 

II.

Patrick sits on his porch, A Farewell To Arms resting in his lap. The sun has finally set and in it’s wake, lies a sky painted vibrant shades of oranges and pink. 

Hemingway’s words dance on the tip of his tongue. They are simple and plain, yet beautiful nonetheless. 

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

The words remind him of the gaping hole inside his chest. Patrick wishes it would disappear, but it won’t. 

The doors to the house slid open and Amanda shuffles out. She slings her arms around him and glances down at his lap, where the frayed novel sits in the crevices of his fingers.

“How was it?” She asks him, using her fingers to comb through his curly hair. 

“Amanda… It was amazing. I finished it feeling empty, though. Because it was really sad. I’m at a loss of words,” he tells her, shaking his head in disbelief

She lets out a genuine, whole-hearted laugh, which rubs Patrick in all the wrong ways. Are you kidding me? He thinks. I just told her how I felt about something, in a serious tone, and she laughed at me? Something inside him turns rigid, cold. 

“Aw, thats cute!” Amanda remarks, clearly oblivious to his anger. How much more patronizing can she get?

“Amanda, can you just give me some alone time? Please,” Patrick says, through gritted teeth. She tenses, but quickly stands up. She wavers for a minute, unsure of what to do, waiting for an apology that won’t come, and then goes back into the house. The door slams behind her, but it’s echoes finally stop and Patrick is at peace again. It’s the first time, at least on the outside, that there has been any problem in their “seemingly perfect” relationship. 

There is only one person he wants to call. So he picks up the phone and dials the number he knows by heart. 

It rings a few times and Jonny’s voice finally breaks through on the opposite line.

“Hello?” his friend’s voice shouts into the phone. The background noise is loud, raucous bar-scene loud. 

“Jon. Can you talk?”

“Is it important? Or can it wait? I’m kinda with a girl right now,” Jonny slurs into the receiver. Patrick can make out the sound of his companion giggling in the background. He tries not to feel disappointed, but it doesn’t work. 

“Yeah. I mean, no. It can wait. Have fun, dude,” Patrick says, sounding as genuine as he can. 

He hangs up the phone, grabs his novel, and returns to his Pad. He doesn’t want to see Amanda, so he crashes on the coach, alone, with his next book. 

III.

Jonny wakes up at 3:42 in a sweaty, half-drunk haze. He sits up and glances at the girl lying face down, next to him. Ella, is her name. She is a pretty but ditzy, curly-haired blonde. Basically, in summary, the female version of Patrick Kane. 

But in so many ways, she is not Kaner. The number one being that he is not attracted to her in any way, shape, or form. She is kind, sweet, and a great time but there is something off and Jonny has a feeling that it doesn’t have to do with her directly. 

In a way, this offness has always been present in his relationships with females in the past. But Jonny had always associated with that “missing piece” as something with the girls themselves, not girls in general. 

He blindly moves his arms and eventually finds his phone. He sends a text to his mom that reads:

Hey, mom. I hate to spring this on you, especially at 3 in the morning, but I decided to swing by Winnipeg for a little while. Let me know if you’re around. Love, Jonny.

It is a pathetic text but he is tired and a little drunk and it is the best he can come up with. He quietly slips out of bed, careful not to wake Ella. He finds a sheet of paper and a pen and scribbles his apologies and his number, not wanting to be an asshole, and then slips out of her apartment into the early morning air. It takes him over an hour to walk home. But God only knows he needs the time and the fresh air to think about everything that he has to face, eventually. 

IV.

Patrick awakes to the smell of chocolate chip pancakes sizzling on the oventop. He rubs his eyes awake with the heel of his palm and walks into the kitchen, where Amanda hovers over the breakfast she is making. He stands in the doorway for a minute, quietly observing her. She is dressed head-to-toe in workout clothes, with her hair piled into a post-run bun and her stature tells him that she is completely oblivious to his presence in the kitchen. He clears his throat and Amanda pivots her body to face him. 

“Hey, listen Patrick…” she trails off, not knowing where to go from there. She tries again. “I thought about our squabble last night and I didn’t realize how condescending I sounded when I made those comments to you. I think it’s great that you’ve become such a well adapted reader, it’s kind of romantic. And I didn’t mean to be condescending, please know that. I’m sorry, Pat. I really am.”

Her voice quivers and Patrick can tell that her apology is heartfelt. 

“It’s okay. I overreacted. I was in a mood and I wanted to be alone, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,” he tells her. Amanda looks at him like she doesn’t quite believe him, but she nods anyway. 

“Here, I made us breakfast,” she says, beaming at him. It makes him feel a little less alone. But Patrick has a feeling that something isn’t quite right. 

V. 

Jonny finally makes it home and falls asleep in the wee hours of the night. He awakes early in the afternoon to 4 missing calls and one text message from his mom. It reads:

Please call me Jonny. Is everything okay?

He picks up the phone and dials his mother, who answers quickly, as if she was sitting by her phone, waiting for his call. He tells her that he needs to shower and get dressed, but that he’ll meet her at a diner downtown, for a late breakfast. 

Jonny slips into the shower, slips underneath the cold, pounding relief of the water pressure beating down on his back. He lets the cool water envelop him, touch him, hold him. He lets it make him feel clean, like there is no weight pressing down on his shoulders. 

But he can’t pretend forever. And soon, he has been standing under the water for a good 45 minutes and is now late to meet his mom. 

VI.

Patrick is nose deep into The Sun Also Rises, another Hemingway book. He feels utterly moved by the tragicness of the plot, of the two characters who so desperately want to be together, but can’t. That somewhere in the translation of imagination versus reality, they become separated from one another. In some way, Patrick feels like he can relate to them. He wonders why, since nothing in his life is applicable to the situation they face. 

“The Sun Also Rises. I think I read that in high school,” Amanda says, cutting into his thoughts. She sinks into the spot next to him, furrowing herself between his chest and the arm of his arm. 

“Do you ever feel like you relate to something, but you don’t really know why you do? Like, I don’t know, because it doesn’t really make sense that you and them would have anything in common,” he asks. Amanda furrows her brow, but takes his words into careful consideration. She has been careful about what she says to him, as if she is tiptoeing around shards of broken glass.

“Maybe, Hemingway is such a good author that he can make you feel anything. That’s the power of his words, I guess,” she finally says. 

It shocks Patrick, a bit, because its the first deep, meaningful thing that she has ever said to him. But it doesn’t feel right, what she is saying. He feels like there is something more than what he sees. 

VII.

Jonny jumps into his car as fast as he can, slamming the door carelessly behind him. He reves up the engine as fast as he can, but not fast enough. His mom is already out the door of the diner, running towards his truck. She is almost about to reach his door when he finally steadies his legs enough to drive away. 

He drives fast and reckless until he is far enough to know that his mother won’t reach him and swings onto a back road, where he jolts his car to a stop and kills the engine. He lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding in. Jonny lets it all out.

The soft, hot tears turn into a gross sobbing. He cries for feeling alone. He cries for feeling like he’s different. He cries for his mother, who doesn’t understand that her son, who has been “straight” his entire life, is suddenly gay, no warning signs at all. He cries and he cries and he cries, he cries until he can’t cry anymore. 

 

VIII.

Patrick finishes The Sun Also Rises. He finishes it with an empty feeling in his chest. Emptier than before. 

He decides to call Jonny, because he misses his friend. The phone rings and rings but Jonny never picks up, which is pretty unusual since the guy is practically glued to his phone, always hovering in case there is a teammate who needs him. 

Patrick waits a half an hour and tries again, but it goes to voicemail again.

When he calls five hours and Jonny is still no where to be found, Kaner starts to feel a little bit worried. He tells Amanda but finds no sympathy in her, she only rolls her eyes and tells him to “be patient” and to remember that “Jon has a life outside of work and apart from you.” 

IX. 

Jonny lays on his back on the stiff mattress of the cabin he rented. He has been laying there for hours maybe, just thinking about everything that has happened. He replays the conversation with his mother in his head, the shaking of her head, the disappointment in her eyes, the way she refused to accept him the way he is. Jonny finds it almost incredulous, to think that his mother, who has supported him for his entire life, couldn’t even find it her heart to fake her acceptance. 

He hears her screaming voice over the sound of his engine.

“Wait, Jonny, please. Come back, Jonny, please.”

He sees the image in the rearview mirror he wishes he could unsee. 

His thinly framed mother standing hopeless amid the kicked up dust from his back tires. Was it too much, he thinks, to have expected a better reaction from his shellshocked mother? Or was he just giving her the benefit of the doubt, as always? 

Jonny also thinks about Patrick, which is no surprise, since Patrick always seems to invade Jonny’s thoughts. In his mind, he watches him laughing, smiling, talking about his books. He thinks of Patrick reading to him…  
 “I’d been sitting here in the half dark and thinking where I could go and ever forget about you… abroad, perhaps to drift through Italy or Spain… where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart…”

Jonny replays this scene what feels like a thousand times until it dawns upon him what he should do next. He gets out his laptop and books the next flight to Italy. The best thing for him is to go somewhere where he can just be another face in the crowd. He needs to go and be alone, truly alone. 

The next thing he does is dial Sharpie, who picks up after the first few rings.

“Toews? What’s good man?” Sharpie’s voice floats through the line. 

“Listen, man. I need you do me a favor or two, is that okay?” Jonny asks as he folds his clothes into his suitcase. 

“Yeah, sure man, of course, anything. Is everything okay?” Sharpie’s questions, his attention tuned and tone serious. 

“Yes, everything is fine. I’m going away to another country… for, uh, personal reasons. And I know this is sketchy and weird but I just need you to trust me. I’m fine I just… uh, this is hard to explain… but I need to figure some stuff out. I just need you to tell Coach Q that I’m going to have to miss the convention but I’lll be back for the home open-“ Johnny rambles but Patrick cuts him off.

“Wait, what? Jonny he’s going to bench you if you miss the convention. How serious is this, man? And why do you need to go to a different country? Are you having some kind of troubles?” The nervousness in Patrick’s voice is evident.

“I know I’m going to get benched and that Q is going to be pissed. And no, it’s not anything that serious. I told you, its something personal and I can’t really explain something I don’t really understand myself. I just need you to trust me and do these things for me. Just send an email to the team and explain that I have something personal going on and will be unavailable for a little bit. Listen I have to go, please Sharpie just do this for me,” Jonny begs. He is running out of time.

“Yeah, of course man. Please don’t do anything stupid, Toews. I love you man. Promise me you’ll call me, there’s not judgement from me,” Patrick says. Jonny mumbles a promise and hangs up. 

A small part of him tells him to call him mom and explain that he is leaving for the country. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he is callous and cold and he doesn’t feel like his mom deserves to know that is safe and okay. He doesn’t because he wants her to worry. He hates himself but he doesn’t call her because he wants her to feel just a fraction of the pain she has caused him. 

X.

Patrick, who has fallen asleep on his couch with a nearly finished Anna Karenina on his chest, awakes to his phone buzzing. Half-asleep and groggy, he squints enough to see that it is from Patrick Sharp with an urgent sign. It reads…

“Coach Q and members of the Chicago Blackhawks,

I just received a call from Jonny saying that he had some personal issues that he had to deal with immediately. He asked me to email all of you apologizing for the inconvenience and to apologize in advance for needing to skip the summer convention. He says he understands that he will most likely get benched for skipping out on such an important event but he says that in order to play to best of his ability and help his team, he must first deal with his personal issues. He will continue to train overseas and will be prepared once he finds himself suitable to return to the United States. Although this is very strange and even concerning, Jonny promised to me that everything was okay and that he just had some things to work out. So I’ll leave this email at that. 

Best,

Patrick Sharp”

Patrick finishes reading the email with an uneasy feeling in his chest. This is very, very unlike Jonny. He can’t help but shake off the feeling that something is seriously wrong.


End file.
